From the depths of the Indian Ocean, a horrific plague has arisen to devastate humankind - a disease that's unknown, unstoppable, and deadly. But it is merely a harbinger of the doom that is to follow. Aboard a cruise liner transformed into a makeshift hospital, Dr. Lisa Cummings and Monk Kokkalis, operatives of SIGMA Force, search for answers to the bizarre affliction. But there are others with far less altruistic intentions.

The Last Oracle: A Sigma Force Novel, Book 5

In Washington, D.C., a homeless man dies in Commander Gray Pierce's arms, shot by an assassin's bullet. But the death leaves behind a greater mystery: a bloody coin found clutched in the dead man's hand, an ancient relic that can be traced back to the Greek Oracle of Delphi.

Black Order: A Sigma Force Novel, Book 3

High in Nepal, a monastery erupts with savagery and madness. Deep in a German mine, abomination wears the innocent face of a child. Hidden in the jungles of Africa, experiments rooted in a dark past have found fertile ground again.

The Doomsday Key: A Sigma Force Novel, Book 6

At Princeton University, a famed geneticist dies inside a biohazard lab. In Rome, a Vatican archaeologist is found dead in St. Peter's Basilica. In Africa, a U.S. senator's son is slain outside a Red Cross camp. The three murders on three continents bear a horrifying connection: all the victims are marked by a Druidic pagan cross burned into their flesh. The bizarre murders thrust Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma Force into a race against time to solve a riddle going back centuries.

The Devil Colony: A Sigma Force Novel, Book 7

Deep in the Rocky Mountains, a gruesome discovery - hundreds of mummified bodies - stirs international attention and fervent controversy. Despite doubts to the bodies' origins, the local Native American Heritage Commission lays claim to the prehistoric remains, along with the strange artifacts found in the same cavern: gold plates inscribed with an unfathomable script.

Bloodline: A Sigma Force Novel, Book 8

Galilee, 1025. A cunning Templar knight uncovers a holy treasure: the Bachal Isu - the staff of Jesus Christ - a priceless icon that holds a mysterious and terrifying power that will forever change humanity if unleashed. A millennium later, Somali pirates hijack a yacht off the coast off the Horn of Africa, kidnapping a young pregnant American woman and brutally killing her husband. Painter Crowe and his SIGMA team are enlisted for the top secret rescue mission. The kidnappee is the daughter of the U.S. President.

Map of Bones: A Sigma Force Novel, Book 2

During a crowded service at a cathedral in Germany, armed intruders in monks' robes unleash a nightmare of blood and destruction. But the killers have not come for gold; they seek a more valuable prize: the bones of the Magi who once paid homage to a newborn savior...a treasure that could reshape the world.

Sandstorm: A Sigma Force Novel, Book 1

An inexplicable explosion rocks the antiquities collection of a London museum and the race begins to determine how it happened, why it happened, and what it means. Lady Kara Kensington's family paid a high price in money and blood to found the gallery that now lies in ruins. Her search for answers leads Kara and her friend Safia al-Maaz, the gallery's curator, into a world they never dreamed existed.

The Eye of God: A Sigma Force Novel, Book 9

In the wilds of Mongolia, a research satellite has crashed, triggering an explosive search for its valuable cargo: a code-black physics project connected to the study of dark energy...and a shocking image of the eastern seaboard of the United States in utter ruin. At the Vatican, a package arrives containing two strange artifacts: a skull scrawled with ancient Aramaic and a tome bound in human skin. DNA evidence reveals that both came from the same body: the long-dead Mongol king Genghis Khan.

The 6th Extinction: Sigma Force, Book 10

A remote military research station sends out a frantic distress call, ending with a chilling final command: Kill us all! Personnel from the neighboring base rush in to discover everyone already dead - and not just the scientists, but every living thing for 50 square miles is annihilated: every animal, plant, and insect, even bacteria. The land is entirely sterile - and the blight is spreading. To halt the inevitable, Commander Gray Pierce and Sigma must unravel a threat that rises out of the distant past.

Ice Hunt

Carved into a moving island of ice twice the size of the United States, Ice Station Grendel has been abandoned for more than 70 years. The twisted brainchild of the finest minds of the former Soviet Union, it was designed to be inaccessible and virtually invisible. But an American undersea research vessel has inadvertently pulled too close - and something has been sighted moving inside the allegedly deserted facility, something whose survival defies every natural law.

Deep Fathom

Ex-Navy SEAL Jack Kirkland surfaces from an aborted underwater salvage mission to find the Earth burning. Solar flares have triggered a series of gargantuan natural disasters. Earthquakes and hellfire rock the globe. Air Force One has vanished from the skies with America’s president on board. Now, with the U.S. on the narrow brink of a nuclear apocalypse, Kirkland must pilot his oceangoing exploration ship, Deep Fathom, on a desperate mission miles below the ocean’s surface.

Amazonia

The Rand scientific expedition entered the lush wilderness of the Amazon and never returned. Years later, one of its members has stumbled out of the world's most inhospitable rainforest - a former Special Forces soldier, scarred, mutilated, terrified, and mere hours from death, who went in with one arm missing...and came out with both intact.

The Kill Switch: Tucker Wayne, Book 1

The mission seems simple enough: Extract a pharmaceutical magnate from Russian soil. But nothing is as it appears to be. A desperate call thrusts Captain Tucker Wayne and his stalwart military dog, Kane, into a frantic race to rescue the brilliant-but-deluded Abram Bukolov from a cadre of skilled assassins. Hunted and betrayed at every turn, Tucker and Kane must discover the truth behind a horror out of the ancient past that can be weaponized to terrorize the modern world. As time rapidly runs out, the deep and intimate bond between dog and soldier will be tested to the extreme.

Excavation

High in the Andes, Dr. Henry Conklin discovers a 500-year-old mummy that should not be there. While deep in the South American jungle, Conklin's nephew, Sam, stumbles upon a remarkable site nestled between two towering peaks, a place hidden from human eyes for thousands of years. Ingenious traps have been laid to ensnare the careless and unsuspecting, and wealth beyond imagining could be the reward for those with the courage to face the terrible unknown.

The Blood Gospel: The Order of the Sanguines, Book 1

An earthquake in Masada, Israel, kills hundreds and reveals a tomb buried in the heart of the mountain. A trio of investigators - Sergeant Jordan Stone, a military forensic expert; Father Rhun Korza, a Vatican priest; and Dr. Erin Granger, a brilliant but disillusioned archaeologist - are sent to explore the macabre discovery, a subterranean temple holding the crucified body of a mummified girl. But a brutal attack at the site sets the three on the run, thrusting them into a race to recover what was once preserved in the tomb's sarcophagus: a book rumored to have been written by Christ's own hand....

Altar of Eden: A Novel

A master at combining heart-stopping suspense and scientific intrigue, New York Times best-selling author James Rollins returns with a thrilling adventure like no other--a shocking story of cruel genetic experiments done in the name of national security and, most disturbing of all, tied to a secret history of the Book of Genesis.

Subterranean

Travel to the bottom of the earth...to a place you never dreamed existed. Beneath the ice...a hand-picked team of specialists makes its way toward the center of the world. They are not the first to venture into this magnificient subterranean labyrinth. Those they follow did not return....

Blood Infernal: The Order of the Sanguines Series

As an escalating scourge of grisly murders sweeps the globe, archaeologist Erin Granger must decipher the truth behind an immortal prophecy foretold in the Blood Gospel, a tome written by Christ and lost for centuries: The shackles of Lucifer have been loosened, and his Chalice remains lost. It will take the light of all three to forge the Chalice anew and banish him again to his eternal darkness.

The Bone Labyrinth: Sigma Force, Book 11

A series of strange events throws the world into turmoil. As a manned Chinese rocket explodes upon launch, three American astronauts, each separated by thousands of miles, are murdered. Then an archaeologist in Croatia uncovers a new cavern system that reveals elaborate primitive paintings by a tribe of Neanderthals.

Innocent Blood: The Order of the Sanguines Series, Book 2

A vicious attack at a ranch in California thrusts archaeologist Erin Granger back into the fold of the Sanguines. Following the prophetic words found in the Blood Gospel, Erin must join forces with Army Sergeant Jordan Stone and Father Rhun Korza to discover and protect a boy believed to be an angel given flesh. But an enigmatic enemy of immense power and terrifying ambition seeks the same child, not to save the world, but to hasten its destruction.

The Forgotten Room: A Novel

New York Times best seller Lincoln Child returns with a riveting new thriller featuring the charismatic and quirky Professor Jeremy Logan, renowned investigator of the strange and the inexplicable, as he uncovers a long-lost secret experiment only rumored to have existed.

The Insider Threat: A Pike Logan Thriller

ISIS, the most maniacal terrorist organization the modern world has ever seen, is poised to make their most audacious strike yet. The United States has anticipated and averted countless attacks from terrorist groups - thanks in large part to the extralegal counterterrorist unit known as the Taskforce. But in The Insider Threat, a much more insidious evil is about to shatter the false sense of safety surrounding civilized nations.

Piranha

In 1902 the volcano Mt. Pelée erupts on the island of Martinique, wiping out an entire city of 30,000 - and sinking a ship carrying a German scientist on the verge of an astonishing breakthrough. More than a century later, Juan Cabrillo will have to deal with that scientist's legacy.

The Patriot Threat: Cotton Malone

In an innovative new approach, Macmillan Audio and Steve Berry have produced an expanded, annotated writer’s cut audiobook edition of The Patriot Threat. The 16th Amendment to the Constitution legalized federal income tax, but what if there were problems with the 1913 ratification of that amendment? Secrets that call in to question decades of tax collecting. There is a surprising truth to this possibility—a truth wholly entertained by Steve Berry, a top-ten New York Times best-selling writer, in his new thriller, The Patriot Threat.

Publisher's Summary

ju-das strain, n. A scientific term for an organism that drives an entire species to extinction

New York Times best-selling author James Rollins returns with a terrifying story of an ancient menace reborn to plague the modern world...and of an impossible hope that lies hidden in the most shocking place imaginable: within the language of angels.

From the depths of the Indian Ocean, a horrific plague has arisen to devastate humankind - a disease that's unknown, unstoppable, and deadly. But it is merely a harbinger of the doom that is to follow. Aboard a cruise liner transformed into a makeshift hospital, Dr. Lisa Cummings and Monk Kokkalis, operatives of SIGMA Force, search for answers to the bizarre affliction. But there are others with far less altruistic intentions. In a savage and sudden coup, terrorists hijack the vessel, turning a mercy ship into a floating bio-weapons lab.

A world away, SIGMA's commander, Gray Pierce, thwarts the murderous schemes of a beautiful would-be killer who holds the first clue to the discovery of a possible cure. Pierce joins forces with the woman who wanted him dead, and together they embark upon an astonishing quest following the trail of the most fabled explorer in history: Marco Polo. But time is an enemy as a worldwide pandemic grows rapidly out of control. As a relentless madman dogs their every step, Gray and his unlikely ally are being pulled into an astonishing mystery buried deep in antiquity and in humanity's genetic code. And as the seconds tick closer to doomsday, Gray Pierce will realize he can truly trust no one, for any one of them could be...a Judas.

What the Critics Say

"Action abounds...as the characters from the previous novel range over the globe. There are murders, disfiguring diseases, pirates, cannibals, and, oh yes, people who glow in the dark....this book is great good fun, if readers suspend their disbelief." (Library Journal)

For the most part, this was a very good book. It is well written and the characters are interesting. Terrific action scenes keep the pace high at times.

The story, however, was simply over-the-top complicated. There are too many characters and some have similar personalities. The twists and turns are thrown together rapidly and are sometimes difficult to straighten out before another is on top of you.

And, there are parts of the book that come across as pre-set movie scenes ... characters portrayed as ruthless that hesitate just long enough for intervention to save the good guys.

In the end, I was relieved that the book ended, not wishing there was more.

This story just kept relentlessly delivering "punches" to the listener. Whether it be in the form of punishing physical abuse to the protagonists (that would have killed mortal humans 10 times over), to forced "scientific" explanations about the Judas strain, to weird mystical reasons for the Judas strain, to inexplicable ties to Marco Polo and his priest. This book is about 3 to 4 hours too long, and its ending(s) are preposterous and confusing.

but I found myself constantly having to rewind my iPod to catch narrative that was too easily unregistered by daydreaming about what brand food my cat would accept or reject or what various and sundry chores I had on my to-do list.

A good book grabs and keeps your attention - sadly, this one did not. I liked the premise, and really wanted to enjoy this story, but the cliched characters and sometimes hackneyed style (her eyes narrowed, his steely gaze spoke, her look conveyed, bla bla bla, etc) gets tiring and rings false.

I enjoy James Rollins. I've read several of his other books and chose to listen to this one--I wasn't disappointed.

If you're looking for Daniel Silva or Robert Ludlum like development and characters skip this book! Rollins style is more of Ted Bell (though I like Rollins better), Clive Cussler or Mathew Reilly. Larger than life heros. This is the type of book that is a fun way to forget reality and just try to keep up with the fast flow (and leave your reality analyzer turned off). Think 007.

For those that have read/listened to Rollins before this does have some similarity in characters (as I've found most authors do). Listen or read several other authors in between Rollins books and this will be a fun blast.

The Judas Strain is very similar to the author's other books. If you enjoy his work, you will enjoy this book. The trick is to never think too much about the action or plot line, but just enjoy drama and clues. I enjoyed listening to this book and how the plot was moved forward. The author has three different plot lines going on at once so you are always moving from story to story. In the end, the story is fun and entertaining, even if the plot line is somewhat far fetched...but that is the whole point to all the "save the world" books! Just enjoy it.

Have to agree. This was hokey. It's like, okay, when are these people going to die. When is this cure going to show itself and help those poor people who are eating themselves going to be discovered. And of course, the creatures from the Black Lagoon! I had a hard time listening to this one. It took me forever. Hope the other books in the series are better.

I had high hopes for this book, as the first few chapters were fascinating, but by the time I reached the third portion of the book, I was bored and wishing it would end already.

I like long books, and I like well-crafted stories. Sometimes the two occur in the same book. They didn't do it in this one. The only part of the story line I still cared about by the end of the book was what was happening to Mom and Dad. If you read the book, you'll recognize this storyline. The rest of it is strictly thriller, and not enthralling enough to keep me thrilled. Some of the Rollins books are excellent. Some are not.

When I saw the hardback edition at Costco, I was fascinated, and a light skim made it seem just as wondrous as the cover promised. The delight of a good audiobook makes long trips go quickly, and this looked like a good travel book. Nope. It's too dull and drawn out. By the time the disease reappears, you are rooting for everyone to get it and die. If several hours of editing had occurred the book might be better. In fact this one might be better abridged, though I normally want nothing to do with an abridged edition. I want the entire story as the author wrote it, not as some editor recrafted it.

Future Rollins reads will wait for used paperbacks to appear on the bookstore shelves. I won't go out of my way to pounce on the fresh meat.

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